White children need not apply

This story ought to be a national discussion item in American households. Yet, it remains for the most part only a regional story in Denver.

The controversy swirls around a school district-wide initiative called PASS -- an after-school tutoring program to "address the needs that children of color may need."

After a note went out to parents to that effect, parents of white children complained. Now the school district is walking back the "whites need not apply" program, saying that white children will be considered "if there is space."

It's a wholesale mess that demands some soul searching on what kind of society we have become that would allow this kind of deal. I like what James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal had to say about the misguided program:

"Is there really any harm in a special tutoring program for minority kids? Perhaps not, but such a thing cannot be reconciled with the relentless antiracism that currently dominates most American institutions. A main goal of that antiracism, of course, is to benefit minorities (or give the impression of benefiting minorities). But such efforts cannot be sustained without constant appeals to fairness, and those appeals are irreconcilable with brazen antiwhite discrimination."